Cold Water
by stikjok
Summary: Takes place four months after the end of Exo. Cent goes hunting a monster.


Cent

Cold Water.

Joe and I were watching the TV at his house. It was an effort on our part to involve his parents with our life since it was, face it, kind of strange. I'd gladly jump them to Kristen Station for a while, but we wanted to impress them with how normal we could be. Patriot Games was playing, which I kind of dug. It wasn't as good as the book, but what movies are?

After the movie ended, Mrs. Trujeque got some tea for me and we chatted as the news started. The second story was about Typhoon Wangtsie. I had been watching this develop over the last three days along with Joe. The news wasn't good. It was scheduled for landfall in a day and a half somewhere on the east coast of one of the Japanese islands and the sustained winds were up to 181 miles an hour. Japan was still reeling from the super typhoon from last year. It cost billions of dollars and hundreds of lives. I leaned close to Joe's ear and said, "What do you think?"

He was slow in replying. "I think you are going to try it no matter what I say. Given that, you should do it now and give the thing time to die before the really nasty stuff hits the coast." He added under his breath, "If it works at all…"

I nodded and stood up. Joe said quickly, "If you're going to do it, I want to be there, ok? It was my idea, after all." I nodded again and put my hand out to help him up. We thanked the Trujeques for the time and gathered our things. I didn't hear what Joe told his parents, but he hugged his Mom and led me away by the hand into the kitchen. It still freaked his Dad out when I jumped Joe somewhere in front of him.

From the kitchen I jumped us to my office in the Apex Operations building. Yes, I have an office, though no one ever expects me to be in it. I picked up the phone on the desk and dialed Wanda. "Wanda? Cent here. Have you been following the typhoon news? Ok, good. I'm going to try Cold Water. Can you get the ball rolling? OK, good. Call me here with the details, I'm going to be dressing up."

Joe went towards a door on my left and I got up to follow. We came into a largish room with emergency supplies of all kinds, but our goal was against the far wall. I picked up the black neoprene vest and pants and two sensors of Wanda's design. I ducked behind the modesty screen and changed into them, carrying out my civvies afterwards. Joe helped me place one of the temperature sensors halfway up my back and the other one close to an ankle, both against the skin.

Then came the wetsuit. It was a specially designed Hyperflex 6/5/4 winter one, with 7mm booties and gloves. Joe checked the seals as it went on and taped the closures securely. We both rechecked the equipment for a scuba jump and were finishing up when the phone rang on the desk. I ran to answer it and after listening carefully, I thanked Wanda and hung up.

Joe looked at me and said, "Where to?"

"Kadena Air Force Base." I replied. "She got General Sterling to approve the use of an E-3 Awacs plane. It was set to move out from under the typhoon anyway along with all the other planes. It has radar and coms, everything we need. I have a jump site close to the base entrance, and we'll get a military escort to the airfield." I shook my head. "Dad won't like it. We never wanted to work this close to the military, but they have the best toys in support of this."

Joe picked up the tanks and other equipment and stood close. "I'm ready." He said. We jumped.

The Typhoon was still 250 miles from the coast, but the rain was coming down hard outside the Doshitai restaurant on the island of Okinawa. I hustled Joe under an awning and hurried out to the street to hail down a cab. I knew I looked weird, but even cab drivers in Japan will stop for a girl in a wetsuit if it looks like you're waving money around. We piled inside and I asked the driver in broken Japanese to take us to the bases' east gate. After a few more exchanges, I borrowed Joe's cell phone and called my old friend Sergeant Mertens to pass our arrival info to General Stirling.

I tipped the driver well outside the gate; he deserved it, the seat where I had been was soaked. Joe, still acting as my equipment caddie, lugged it all behind me as I ran for the guard house at the gate. A guard greeted us inside and a captain came up from behind him. "Ma'am," He said. "I'm to take Spacegirl to the airfield. Do you have any proof of identity?"

It's not often I'm asked that. My picture has been splattered wider than I would have believed a few months ago, and it was getting harder and harder to sneak into concerts with Joe. I said, "What, like an ID card or something?" I jumped and tapped him on the shoulder from behind. "Will this do?"

We were driving onto the tarmac of the airfield ten minutes later. On the way, I called Dad and updated him on our plans. He had the sat phone connection on speaker at the Station and I could hear and argument start up about the danger, when the most unexpected thing happened. Tessa whistled. The shy girl was strident when she said, "In my country, they are called Bagya. Bagya Yolanda killed over 6000 people two years ago, many in my home province. If Cent can help, shouldn't she? She's a good girl. Drowning is such a bad way to die."

That stopped them. Mom gave her blessing as we were climbing the stairway onto the E-3.

Joe followed an airman to the back of the plane, trying not to bump people with all the stuff in his arms. I met with the Pilot and the Mission Watch Officer. I explained what I would need, and they went forward to file a flight plan with the tower.

I went back to join Joe, trying to ignore the concealed looks I was getting from the flight crew. I didn't know if they were because I was Spacegirl, or that I was a fairly fit 18-year-old girl wearing nothing but a tight wetsuit. There were some rows of seats after the equipment bays up front, and I slid into the seat next to Joe. I leaned against him and closed my eyes, trying to quell the nervousness I felt.

Soon, the captain's' voice came through the speakers telling us we were rolling in two minutes. It came just as a powerful gust struck the side of the plane, rocking it severely on the landing gear. I clutched at Joe's arm, which was only fair, as he was doing the same to mine. I raised my mouth and said into his ear, "Mom said I flew somewhere when I was four. I don't remember it. This will be my first time flying in a big Tylenol."

Joe grinned as he recognised the line from 'Airplane!' but he held my hand tight just the same as we seemed to hit every bump in the taxiways before takeoff. We stayed like that for the next few minutes as we took off, but the dropping elevator feeling as we hit rotation on the runway was nothing next to jumping into orbit, so I was fine after that. Joe said, "I kept on worrying that the big dish on the roof would catch the wind as we took off. Glad these guys know what they're doing."

I pulled Joe forward and found the Mission Watch officer again and had him show Joe how to operate the coms that would hook up with my scuba radio. I asked, " How high will you be circling?"

"We've got clearance for a racetrack at flight level 400. The typhoon is limited to 300 and below, so we should be good. After we drop you off, we can stay in position up to six hours, conditions permitting. We also have orders to aid you as much as possible." He looked closely at my face and added softly, "It's not often we fly as support without being told what's up. Can you say?"

I shrugged. "I'm here to slay the monster, if I can. It's the first time we've tried this, so cross your fingers. Please pass to Joe all the weather info he asks for, we'll need close radar support."

Joe and I went back to our seats and began to drape the air tanks, harness and headgear we needed. I was overheating by this time, this wetsuit, unlike the MCP spacesuit, was designed to hold onto every erg of heat that the body produced. Still, we acted like we were going through the normal vacuum checklist, and it helped my mindset for the job. Joe went forward and used the radio they set him down at to check my coms. "Radio check." I heard. "Click, click." I said into my mike with a smile. We'd decided on the full face scuba rig to allow for easy radio coms.

"The captain just passed on to us that we're three minutes from target, Cent. Do you need anything?"

I shrugged, knowing he couldn't see it. "Next time, I want an Ipod in here." I heard him chuckle.

"Two minutes. I've asked the crew here to record for us all the radio and radar info so we can pinpoint your jump to best effect, ok?"

"Yeah, no problem." I said. I counted slowly in my head to steady my breathing.

The captain broke in. "Good luck, Spacegirl Ten seconds till target. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. On Target."

I jumped, looking through the window to twenty meters off the port side, killing my velocity in the process. I began to fall, and checked the waterproof GPS on my wrist before looking down into the eye of the monster.

_It all started like this. Joe's class schedule included Oceanography 120, Global Environmental Challenges this semester. The instructor was going through the higher prevalence of hurricanes, typhoons, and other extremes of weather that the world was experiencing. During the lecture, the structure of large storms was discussed. _

_Typhoons and hurricanes form from low pressure, coriolis force, and warm water. Warm, moist air gets drawn upward from the edges of the eye and evaporate, creating a low pressure zone in the eye that makes the storm ever more powerful as long as it's over the water continuing to draw on that moisture to power it._

_Cent was never far from Joe's mind. He asked himself, "What would Cent do?" He knew she could create high and low pressure areas by twinning; he'd been through an extreme example of it. If she twinned to space in the eye, it would likely make the storm more powerful, pumping down the low pressure and drawing the warm water even faster. But what if she could simultaneously heighten the pressure and cool the ocean?_

I dropped like a stone, skydiving without a parachute, watching the GPS for height above sea level. The heavy, sweaty feeling under the wetsuit bled off, and I was fairly comfortable, but I killed the downward velocity every few seconds just the same. The wetsuit could stand the wind, but the tanks, hoses and other equipment was not aerodynamic and flapped like mad. If we did this again (if it worked this time!), I'd enclose everything I could into something that would take the ride down easier.

I arrived at my destination at the center of the eye, a 25 kilometer expanse that belied the violence of the winds outside it. I stopped a klick above the ocean surface and twinned five feet in front of me, looking into my own eyes, both locations nailed in place and seemingly motionless. I reached slowly to my chest and turned a rheostat all the way to the right.

On my back, a housing opened and three wings unfolded. To my right, to my left, and straight behind, they followed an electrostatic command and extended five feet above my head and twenty feet in those directions. They moved into position and stayed there, unmoving. Any air that blowed my way just went through me, from one twin to another, not touching. And my surface area that leaked… it had just expanded twentyfold.

I passed on that successful step to Joe, who acknowledged tersely. I knew he was worried about this, about me, especially since it had been his idea.

Time for the next step. I visualized my destination, and one end of the twinning appeared ten feet above the surface of the Arctic Ocean, 200 miles from the North Pole towards the East Siberian sea. The higher polar pressure breezed through me, but it wasn't enough. I looked down, seeing the cold, rough surface, and moved the twin fifty feet below the surface.

The twin in the eye lost all vision. I dimly was aware of the water roiling through me, it was like a chilly waterfall that went in every direction. The twin beneath the cold surface fared no better; the moving water obscured everything. The worst problem, though, was something I hadn't suspected… it was LOUD. It was like every molecule of water banged against each other as soon as it exited the tunnel I had become. I had visited Niagara Falls with my Dad, it was like that but right in front of my face. And behind my head. Everywhere, you get the idea.

I tried to contact Joe, but realized the problem with that and slowly dialed the knob on the side of my facemask up by stages, calling steadily into my mike until I could make out his voice over the radio.

When it was clear we'd made good contact, he said, "I wish you could see this. You're a ball of water thirty feet high and seventy across. I've never seen anything like it. You are going to have to watch this feed later and give this formation a name! All the guys in this cabin are going gaga!"

I grinned. "Looking forward to it. Keep an eye on the pressure and water temp, I need to know when I'm having an effect. If we need a faster flow, the ocean bottom here is 600 feet. I don't want to get too close, though and start sucking up bottom silt."

The theory we had come up with, and worked out on computer models at Stanford, was that when massive amounts of water explode in the middle of a low pressure are, suddenly it isn't. If that water was cold as possible, it would kill the formation from the bottom, robbing the storm of the moist, warm air that gave it its massive power.

I stuck with it, breathing easily from the tanks, the small amount of thermal transfer from the water being handled by the well sealed wetsuit, designed for this kind of cold. I concentrated on keeping the twinning in the same places, but I couldn't use the gps… the darn thing was on my forearm and I couldn't see it through all the moving water! I brought it to where it was touching my faceplate and now I couldn't see it because it was too close. I couldn't focus on it! I told Joe of this problem and he said he'd let me know if I drifted.

He did have to direct me once. It was so hard to keep up… I knew where each twin was, where we had started, but not being able to see either side was seriously annoying and disorienting. Still, I gave it the hour we had prepared for, and when Joe told me, "Time, Cent. Withdraw." I pulled the arctic twin back in front of me and waited for the water to clear. When it did, I withdrew the wings back into the housing and cut the twinning. I started to fall, but jumped back to my office and sat down heavily on the coffee table in the corner.

I pulled my mask up and off and turned my oxy mix off as well. When I felt my legs could support me, I walked to the desk, called Wanda again and asked her to send someone up to help me. I think I was still yelling, my ears were ringing and echoing the sound of violent water. Richard Lane showed up right away, one of the retired astronauts we had snatched up and hired to support Apex operations. It turned out he was an experienced scuba diver and he expertly aided me out of the complex arrangement I had all over my torso. I shooed him out when I got down to vest and pants and came out of the room fifteen minutes later, dressed again in jeans and a sweatshirt. Richard was still waiting on me, but he had fetched a cup of hot tea, for which I blessed him mightily.

He started putting things away, and I walked downstairs to the open ops area. I sat down next to Wanda and asked if Joe had checked in yet. "He's holding on line 2."

"Hey! Glad to hear you!" He said. I replied that I was glad to hear anything, but added that that especially included him. I asked the status of the mission.

"Well, the air pressure in the eye reversed itself fairly quickly and stopped the downward airflow in the center. We're tracking wind speeds and surface water temperature, and in the hour you twinned, the edge wind maximums went from 190 miles per hour to 150, and are still dropping rapidly. Some twisters have formed, but all are over the water and doing no damage. Water surface temperature is ranging from 2 centigrade at the eye to a fifty mile radius. The cold water is sinking, but thermal transfer is killing the wind production by evaporation. The weather guy on board thinks that the storm will downgrade from catagory 5 to a tropical depression withing another couple of hours. This bird is going to stay up another four hours to observe. Can you come and get me at Base Ops when we land?"

"If they'll let me walk over from the tarmac where we were dropped off, you bet. Just call me at the station. I want to watch it from overhead."

I hung up, thanked Wanda for her help and jumped to Kristen Station, close to the viewport. I reached out, caught the edge flange and pulled myself close. I looked at the three quarter full planet and saw my victim on the lower left. I stared at it hard and said softly, "And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you."

That quote from Pulp Fiction always stuck with me. I was glad to use it on the creeping grey monster dying down that gravity well. I turned back to my family and into their arms.


End file.
